Josiah Preciadohttps://josiahpreciado.com
The story of one family's journey from Mexico to the USA. Scroll all the way down to read from the beginning!Mon, 11 Dec 2017 13:26:18 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/0510806726fd8ae2d77dbdc9214518f7?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngJosiah Preciadohttps://josiahpreciado.com
Randomhttps://josiahpreciado.com/2015/12/04/random/
https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/12/04/random/#respondSat, 05 Dec 2015 05:59:34 +0000http://josiahpreciado.com/?p=334]]>(Photo: Some rights reserved by Spirit635)

I watched nervously as he arranged the white powder into neat little lines on a small mirror in his bedroom. Strangely enough the whole entire time that he was dicing the booger sugar with a razor blade he was discussing how annoyed he was with one of the girls that he partied with for wasting lines of the precious drug in a accident that she feigned in order to get out of snorting the stuff without looking like a wuss. Then he held the tray out for me as casually as he would a platter of Pixy Stix.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

A little while after Dad graduated high school, he was partying in a secluded house in Saticoy when the drummer of his new band offered him heroin. Dad was already drunk and high on weed, as were most of the people at the party. No one bothered them all the way out in the Saticoy house which is why they “practiced” there. The guy offered Henry Vicuna heroin also as he waited for Dad’s response.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The first band that Dad had put together in high school had been moderately successful after the talent show (which was actually at Santa Clara High School and not Saint Anthony’s as was written in the previous post, “The Band”). They did a few parties here and there, and a battle of the bands, but they also expanded their membership to 12 people. Dad had just learned how to actually play chords on guitar, but now he had two other guys who wanted to play guitar and no one to play bass; so Dad started learning the bass. Unfortunately, 12 members was a little too much band for a few high school-aged kids to coordinate especially after they all graduated. There is no specific reason for why the band broke up, but they did. This experience got my dad hooked; he has been involved in music in one way or another ever since.

The next band that my dad put together (my dad’s life can be told through the making and breaking of bands) was called “Random”. Random consisted of Dad, Henry, and a few guys that they knew from Ventura College. Dad took a few music classes at Ventura College, but he mostly played foosball and chased a particular guapa who wouldn’t give him the time of day.

“We had a really good guitar player,” Dad said about Random. “He went on to become a very accomplished jazz guitarist. We also had a really good harmonica player.” So it was back to bass for Dad.

It was Random that also had a drummer who’s mother was one of the biggest drug pushers in Colonia. This meant free drugs for him and by association, the rest of the band. Hence, the parties/practices in distant Saticoy. Hence, the constant substance abuse at said “practices”.

“Around that time Cheech and Chong began to become popular,” Dad said. “And that was the life we were living…smoked weed all day.”

Mug shot of my old man from Folsom. Just kidding! He never served time. I think?

A few of Dad’s friends were also becoming heroin addicts at these parties, but it was happening in increments. First, there was always weed and alcohol available so people usually started with that. Then they would start experimenting with pills; Quaaludes to bring them down and wires or bennies or beans to hype them up again. Then they would inject a small amount of heroin under their skin to give themselves a little taste. Joy-popping is what they called it.

Mainline was when they injected heroin directly into their veins which is what this drummer with the drug dealing mother wanted Dad and his best friend to do. Why? More customers for the family business? Because no one likes to get high alone? Because misery loves company? Who knows. All I care about is that Dad and Henry said, “No,” just as I refused the cocaine that was offered to me when I was 12 years old. Where would my family be if Dad had said yes? Where would I be if I had? It is only by the grace of God that I’m here now. It is only by the grace of God that I have a dad to write about at all.

One night as Random was jamming out, stoned out of their minds, they decided to record themselves. As they laid down some sick tracks they all boasted about how brilliant they were musically. The bad thing about recordings though is that they don’t lie. They next day Henry and Dad went to the Saticoy house to get ready for another party. After a little clean-up they decided to listen to the amazing songs that they had recorded. What they heard with sober ears were not the sounds of musical prodigies, but they klutzy clamoring of wasted amateurs. In that moment, Dad and Henry looked at each other.

“Hey. Do you like doing this?” Dad said meaning the party scene, getting wasted, and not giving their best performances because of said wastedness.

“No,” Henry said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dad said.

That was a major turning point and they did it together. From that day on, Dad and Henry began to leave the party scene behind them. What if Dad didn’t have his best friend there ready to leave with him? Who knows how different their lives would have been? Who knows how different my life would have been for that matter?

They were just a few neighborhood kids hanging out and tinkering on whatever instruments that they could get their hands on, but it was a friend of my dad’s that we will call Fernando that took things to the next level. Fernando saw something in my dad that he couldn’t see himself; the musical aptitude that Dad’s third grade teacher at Ramona Elementary had seen. The natural, musical gifting that is in most of my family members and which we can trace back to my Great-Grandfather Toribio, but which I suspect goes even further back than that (call me anytime Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.)! The fact that Fernando perceived this calling that has been passed down through several generations of my family by simply hearing Dad tinker out little melodies on the plastic, toy guitar that he received for Christmas one year is quite extraordinary.

None of the guys were rich kids by any means, but Fernando was in an especially desperate situation. He didn’t technically have a permanent residence which meant he was technically homeless from a purely technological point of view. With no father present and with the recent, untimely death of his mother, Fernando became an orphan while he was still in his teens. He always had godparents and relatives to give him a place to stay, but he didn’t really have much money or a place that he called home. This made it all the more extraordinary when he dropped his last $80 on an electrical guitar amplifier at Sears. The amp was not for him, however.

“Look at what I bought you,” Fernando said to Dad as they were all hanging out in one of their friends houses one day.

“Wait a minute? Why are you buying this for me?” Dad said knowing every detail of Fernando’s living situation. “You spend all your money?”

“Oh yeah. We’re going to make a band,” Fernando continued very matter-of-factly.

“What band? We’re not going to make a band. I don’t know how to play,” Dad said.

“Yeah, but you’re going to learn because you’ve got a really good ear for it.”

“What does that mean? I just fiddle with it. I don’t know how to play this thing.”

“Yeah, but that’s how you start. So I bought you this amp.”

Dad on the organ at the Kessler household in 1976.

The gauntlet had been thrown. Fernando had put his money where his mouth was and now it was up to Dad. What was he going to do? Was he going to keep farting around with his friends or was he going to get serious about music? Dad picked up Fernando’s guitar, plugged it into the amp that he had apparently bought for him, and attempted to learn some the songs that they had records of. Through sheer determination Dad got his little band to fake their way through a couple of Top 40 hits and local favorites. Just when they had gotten a few songs down, there just happened to be a talent show at St. Anthony’s Church in Oxnard that was about to begin. Dad and the band which consisted of himself, Fernando, his best friend Henry Vicuña, and few others, decided to enter the competition.

St. Anthony’s had some good musicians that participated in the talent show. Kids that could actually read music and who could afford private lessons. One group played the Moody Blues’ tune “Knights in White Satin” and musically everything sounded perfect to Dad. The crowd didn’t give a very rousing response when they had finished the song for some reason though. St. Anthony’s also had a female vocalist who was extremely exceptional. She sang “Your Song” by Elton John perfectly, but, once again, the crowd’s response was ho-hum.

”Then it was our turn and this is where I learned the secret of music,” Dad told me as he recounted his first gig. “It’s not about how good you play the music, it’s how entertaining is it…when we came on they were so ready for something different…”

Dad and the band began their performance with “Samba Pa Ti,” by Carlos Santana and the crowd immediately began to perk up. Were they in the right key? Were they hitting all of the chord changes at the same time? That’s debatable; the audience’s response was not as they immediately began grooving with the songs initial mellow pace. When the band got to the fast part of the song the crowd erupted with cheers. At long last there was life in one of the talent show performances.

Dad’s band finished “Samba Pa Ti,” and immediately went into “Soul Power” by James Brown without letting the audience catch their breath. This is where Henry Vicuña really shined because he did a decent James Brown and was an electrifying, soul singer in his own right. Everyone loved it and just in case Santana and James Brown weren’t universally loved enough, they ended with “La Bamba”. They finished their set to uproarious cheering which left the band feeling for the first time that they might have a chance at winning the whole thing.

Their biggest competition ended up being a group that called themselves “The Varros.” It was three members of the Navarro family, whom Dad has been good friends with for many years now. They did the Rare Earth rendition of “Get Ready” and “Born on the Bayou” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, but they actually played their songs in the correct key. Still Dad thought his band got enough of a crowd response to take the win. As they were waiting to hear the decision, one of the judges came up to Dad privately; not a good sign.

“Listen, you should win it,” the judge began. “But the Navarros have been here for four years now. We’ve got to give it to them.”

So Dad and his rag-tag band of Colonia natives got bumped down to second place by The Varros, but they didn’t really lose because they got their first paid gig from that talent show. They were no longer just jamming out together in their parents’ garage. They were officially making money as a band. Now they just needed a name.

Dad and Joey Navarro whom he has been friends with for a very long time. Yes, he was one of the Varros who beat him, but we don’t hold grudges or anything like that.]]>https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/11/20/the-band/feed/0Dad_Bass_blurryjosiahepreciadoDad_organ_Kesslers_Home_76Dad_Jooey_cafegymatoriumA Class Acthttps://josiahpreciado.com/2015/11/08/a-class-act/
https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/11/08/a-class-act/#commentsMon, 09 Nov 2015 06:53:35 +0000http://josiahpreciado.com/?p=319]]>(Photo: My mom, my oldest brother Tino, and our father, Snoop Doggy-Dog)

Grandma Next Door hit the roof when Tata brought a new mom to her home and she wasn’t the only one who was upset at the union. This woman’s own children were not too happy that they had run off and tied the knot. Of course, Dad wasn’t privy to these conversations since he was just a grandson. All he remembers is not seeing the lady for a long stretch of time and being curious about it.

“Ahhh, it wasn’t going to work out…” Tata said so nonchalantly that Dad had to fight back laughter.

“So they weren’t just engaged?” I asked Dad. This shocked me because I don’t remember seeing any new great-grandmas around the house, let alone one that was legit!

“Nope. They had to be full on married because they got the marriage annulled by the Catholic Church.”

While he was here in America, Tata managed to do some incredible things and visit some amazing places despite not being able to drive or speak English. Remember from my earlier post how Tata gave up on the whole notion of driving an automobile? Dad remembers seeing Tata’s last attempt ending in him losing control of his car and accidentally driving it up an embankment. Tata got so frustrated that he abandoned his vehicle and never tried to drive again.

This didn’t stop Tata from going places. Not in the least. Tata learned the bus system, got a job at the senior center, and went on several trips with this group of his peers: Disneyland, Vegas, Hawaii. Tata became a world traveler!

“One day, Tata, showed me a picture of him and three ladies from the senior center on a trip to Disneyland that they took,” Dad told me. “He held it up, pointed to the woman that was the furthest away from him, and said, ‘You see this lady? She’s upset because I’m standing next to her!’ and then he pointed to one of the ladies that were right next to him.

Tata didn’t mind all of the attention, but apparently he wasn’t very emotionally invested in any of his admirers.

“Yeah, I don’t really like any of them, ” Tata told Dad. “But they buy me stuff so I let them.”

Nothing ever worked out romantically for Tata after he had his second marriage annulled. This was probably because he never really wanted to get serious again after such a turbulent first marriage.

Tata is the oldest relative that I have memories of. He was alive until I was just about 5 years old. I have many memories of playing in my front yard with my little brother and my cousins when I was very young. I would look down to the end of my street for Tata. After a while I would see his figure appear at the corner of West Cedar and J-Street carrying huge bags of recyclables on his back. He always had the same hat on every day. I was so overjoyed that I would run to him in dramatic slow-motion while inspirational music played in the background. Then I would look up to him with my little eyes full of fresh tears and say, “Tata, can I have a dollar?”

Yup. I bummed a dollar off of Tata for the ice-cream man every single day and I don’t remember him ever saying, “No.”

But that was Tata; full of generosity. Every time he went to Mexico to visit the adult children that he still had living there he would take 3 to 4 thousand dollars with him and give it away. Dad also remembers working on a beat up truck with his brother Navi and Tata coming over to see their progress.

“What’s it going to take to get this thing running?” he asked.

“Parts,” Tío Navi said. “It’s going to take about a thousand dollars in parts.”

“Here,” Tata said handing him a grand. “Take this and pay me back when you get a chance,”

One night, Tata made a point to go to every single person in the house and tell them all, “Good-night” and that he was going to bed. This wasn’t that unusual. He would often say good night, but not to the entire household. Since he was now in a room all by himself he turned on his fan and cranked his TV up full blast.

It was the TV blasting that lead the family to Tata’s room the next morning where they found him on the floor, dead. The cause was most likely a massive heart attack. Grandpa Next Door picked him up and put him in his bed. Dad came from our home next door as soon as he got the call. Everyone was stunned because this was the first loss in the family that was so up close and personal. It was definitely my first experience of death. As the family was trying to process everything, an employee from a local funeral home came in and began talking to them.

“I just wanted to let you know,” the man said. “That all of the arrangements for the funeral have been made and paid in full so you don’t have anything to worry about. We will take care of everything from this point on.”

This was more than a little strange to my family, but at the same time that was Tata. Even in death, he refused to be a burden to anyone. He picked out his own mausoleum, he made sure to say good-night/good-bye to everyone, and even picked up the tab for his own funeral.

“He was a class act all the way to the end,” Dad said. I agree and not just because of all of the dollars I bummed off of Tata. Learning all of these stories that I never knew about him has made me hope to be half of the man that he was; in generosity, in kindness, and in courage.

“This is my grandson,” Nino said to el jefe of the celery field that he was working in that summer. “I was wondering if he could work with us?”

“Pues, are you going to take responsibility for him?” el jefe said covering his own butt as any shrewd businessman would.

“Of course,” Nino said.

Cutting celery sounds easy to the uninitiated (like myself), but for my dad at the spry young age of 16 years old it was nearly impossible to keep up with his 66 year old grandfather. In fact, Dad was the slowest one in field. He had no idea why he wasn’t keeping up despite his best efforts. Nino had showed him how to do everything. He showed him which stalks to cut and discard. He showed him how to stack the celery in bundles for the others to load onto the trucks, but Dad just couldn’t keep up with the relentless line of celery cutters that was always 5 to 10 paces ahead of him. Every once in a while, Nino kindly fell back in the line to help his grandson catch-up even though he must have been exhausted himself. He even inspired a few of his kinder co-workers to do the same, but for the entire week Dad could never stay with the line for very long.

Determined to do a good job for the old man, Dad climbed into the army style truck with Nino for his second week of cutting celery. When they got to the field, Dad looked at the celery and could swear that it looked different to him somehow. Now he felt like he could see clearly what he was supposed to prune and what he was supposed to salvage. He grabbed his knife and began cutting and stacking as best as he could. Before he knew it, he was beginning to keep pace with the others. No one needed to help him catch up anymore or babysit him. After a while he even began to pass people up. As the summer progressed he became so fast that his co-workers were beginning to grow suspicious of his work. Nino looked at him and his tiny chest swelled-up with uncontrollable pride for his grandson.

They were all living in the house on West Cedar Street (where Grandpa Next Door still resides), when Nino finally came to America. Eventually, Nino and Dad ended up sharing the bedroom which faced the old lemon tree in the backyard. He was not Nino’s first roommate, but the third. Nino had successfully managed to scare away both Tío Corny and Tío Navi with his…quirks. There was a high price to pay if you wanted to bunk with the old man and apparently Dad’s two brothers would rather sleep in the living room than pay it.

“Where you going, Nino?” Dad asked at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. which was when his grandfather always got up.

“To find you a new grandma…” was Nino’s pat answer as he broke out in his manic, breathy laugh.

If Nino was up at 5 a.m. you were up at 5 a.m. since he felt you were going to be late for school if he didn’t wake you up before the sun. Even if he didn’t purposefully wake you up, his eye-rubbing ritual was loud enough to wake someone who was cryogenically frozen. Nino had huge bags under his eyes that he would rub every morning and they created a noise through the room as if he were trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath themselves were stored. Then he burnt the candle at the other end with the insomnia that he developed from years of Magdalena heat keeping him awake late into the night. At 11 or 12 at night he would just start talking to you if you were rooming with him, even if you were sound asleep. And then, of course, he would end his day just as he had begun it…by repeating his eye-rubbing ritual.

When he did sleep it wasn’t for very long. Everyone suspected that Nino suffered from diabetes, but instead of having a doctor prescribe a treatment for him he created his own. At 2 a.m., he would get up and balance his blood sugar with a piece of fruit. This wouldn’t have been so bad if he still had teeth. The noise of Nino gumming a piece of apple was enough to wake a bear out of hibernation. It was even worse if he selected an orange as his late night snack because then slurping was involved. And we haven’t even covered the man’s farting, yet.

“The noise that came out of this little man when he farted,” Dad said. “You would look at him and wonder how it was possible.”

Nino would rip one and say, “Vuelan pedazos de calzones,” suggesting that his flatulence was strong enough to cause pieces of his underwear to take flight!

How could Dad stand all of this? Who knows? Maybe it was because he was such a heavy sleeper. Maybe it was because Dad has been partially deaf in one ear for most of his life (wow I’ve got to tell that story next!) and so the noises weren’t as loud for him as they were for his brothers. It also could have been because he loved Nino because he was a kind, generous, righteous man who always had time for his grandson. It could have been because his grandfather believed in him even when he was struggling at the job that he had vouched for him to get. It appeared that Dad wasn’t the only one who could put up with the cacophony of Nino’s bodily functions because one day, making good on his promise, he showed up at the house remarried.

“Te dije!” Nino said holding the hand of a woman no one in the family had meet before. “This is your new grandma!”

“Can I go with you, Nino?” Dad asked when he was the tender age of five years old. It was the monsoon season in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico at the time so it was pouring down a heavy rain. Rain that you could feel in your very gut.

“No,” Nino said. “It’s raining too hard.”

Dad called my Great Grandfather Ezekiel (the man I would later come to know as “Tata”), “Nino,” because he was godfather to his brother Corny, the eldest child in the family. Since Corny always called him nino, all of his younger brothers and sisters followed suit. Dad actually thought that nino meant grandfather and not godfather until I corrected him during the interview for this story. He was crushed…

Nino put on his jacket and his trusty hat. Even as a child, Dad knew that Nino was a rather short man with a slight build. Nino had to fight to open the door against the crazy weather as he went to buy pan dulce at 5 a.m. like he always did for the family. When he came back he was soaked to the bone along with the bag that he carried from the bakery. Somehow the bread didn’t get wet because Tata had magical powers!

Dad loved Nino and learned a lot from him. Nino attended mass every morning to get right with God at the beginning of each day. He always included Dad and spoiled him as much as he could despite never having much money.

Nino fought against poverty his entire life. He was fearless in business, willing to try anything and everything to make a buck, but this never translated into success for him. Nino was generous to a fault which is the reason, Dad theorizes, his businesses never turned a profit. Nino would literally give the shirt off of his back if he saw someone on the streets who needed one. I mean he would really come home shirtless to his family which included his daughter Emilia. There were times when his family was very much in danger of going hungry and he would still give to others infuriating his wife, Epifania, to no end.

There is a story from Preciado Family folklore where Nino was talking to some guy who owed him money. They were in their home in Mixtlan back then and this guy was giving him a sob story to explain why he couldn’t pay back the money that he owed him. Nino listened very patiently and with great sympathy for the man. He was buying it all and Epifania knew he was going to let him off the hook despite their family’s desperate need for income. So she took matters into her own hands, left the room for a minute, and came back with a gun.

“You are going to pay us,” she said. “Or you’re not going to leave this house…”

Miraculously, the man was able to pay right then and there. What can I say? Don’t mess with a mom trying to feed her kids…

There is a phrase that Epifania would say in Spanish when she was upset with Nino that Dad can’t quite remember perfectly. Basically, she would say that Nino was light to the world and darkness to his own family. Nino was no saint though.

“What do you know?” Nino would often retort harshly. “You’re a woman. No woman tells me what to do!”

Needless to say their marriage did not last. Dad doesn’t know if they ever officially divorced or not, but they definitely separated which is why Nino moved in with them in Magdalena and she didn’t. Also because no one in the family wanted to get shot…

When the family moved to America, Nino stayed behind with a few of his daughters to take care of the house and run the dwindling ice delivery business in his son-in-law’s place. Isn’t that just Nino’s luck! To take over a business just as it is becoming extinct. As if that wasn’t enough to kill his profits there was also the small problem of Nino being unable to drive.

“Tata never learned how to drive?” I asked Dad when I learned this.

“He invested a lot of money and time into it,” Dad answered. “But he could never quite get the hang of it. He drove a horse and buggy. He knew everything about horses, but he couldn’t figure out cars…”

Nino eventually had to give up on driving the ice delivery truck, most likely because he didn’t want to kill himself or anyone else on the road, and hire someone else to drive it for him. This cost him half his paycheck which just wasn’t enough to get by on. Eventually, Nino decided to give up on yet another business and come out to America to live with the rest of the family which was just fine with Dad. He loved Nino because he was a kind, generous, righteous man. Dad was going to get a lot more of his grandfather than he ever bargained for because eventually they would be sharing a room together, just the two of them. A sixty-year old man and a teen-ager in the same room! What could possibly go wrong?

]]>https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/10/09/nino/feed/0simpleinsomnia_woman_gun_widerjosiahepreciadoJazz Flutehttps://josiahpreciado.com/2015/09/25/jazz-flute/
https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/09/25/jazz-flute/#commentsFri, 25 Sep 2015 23:14:43 +0000http://josiahpreciado.com/?p=290]]>(Photo: From left to right. You know. Just like how you read. Mom, Dad, and Tino circa 6 years old?)

Back in the sixties grade schools used to have a magical thing called a music program. Through this music program Dad began learning the recorder flute. They started everyone off with the recorder flute in the third grade because it was much cooler than say an electric guitar or a drum kit.

Dad’s teachers were quite impressed after seeing his amazing talents on this most gangster of instruments. Playing and even reading music just seemed to come naturally so the powers that be decided to open the gates of the kingdom to him.

“Toby,” the teacher said as she dropped a few mystical looking forms onto Dad’s desk. “Choose wisely, my son.”

As best as he could decipher from the elfish language that the forms were written in, the school was going to give him any instrument that was listed on these papers for his next year of school. Overwhelmed, Dad selected the saxophone because it looked the coolest, but not quite as cool as the recorder of course.

Sometime after successfully completing the third grade tragedy struck. My Grandma Next Door informed my dad that he was not to return to Ramona for fourth grade. He was to complete his primary education at the local, private Catholic school which did not have the celestial anomaly known as a music program.

“But Mom,” Dad protested. “They are going to give me a saxophone!”

“ꜟTú estás loco!” Grandma said. For those of you who don’t speak Spanish that means You are crazy. You know, like El Pollo Loco. I should be translating Marquez…

Dad attended Our Lady of Guadalupe School for the remainder of his primary education. Tino, his eldest son, is currently one of the best alto sax players in Ventura County. Had Grandma Next Door not pulled Dad out of Ramona Elementary he could have continued learning how to read and play music instead of just jamming out with a few friends in garage bands. He could have gotten a degree in music and formed an orchestra as his namesake, Great Grandpa Toribio, had done in Mexico. He could have been a huge recorder flute sensation and toured with the Beatles and Jethro Tull!

Or he could have ended up strung out on drugs like a lot of his Ramona classmates did. He could have chosen the life of a gangbanger like a lot of his Ramona classmates did. Dad remembers a lot of sad stories of kids that he knew who got caught up in the gang mentality which was so dominant in Colonia. He wonders if the Colonia Boys gave him a few free passes because they remembered him from the one year that he attended school with them.

There was one night in particular that Dad ran into three former Ramona classmates while he was walking home. One of them was named Benjy which always makes me think of the movie about the dog of the same name. Another one of them, the jokester in class, was nicknamed “Froggie” because he was small, barrel-chested, and had a short neck. These guys came up to him and Dad said hello all friendly-like as he always did when he saw kids that he knew. Not one of them responded. They all remained deeply serious. Then Froggie stepped-up closer to him.

“I hear you’ve been saying stuff about me,” Froggie said.

“What?” Toby said. He noticed that Froggie was visibly shaking.

“Go home, Froggie,” Dad said as he turned around and walked home.

Dad still doesn’t know what that was all about. Was Froggie being put through some sort of initiation or something? I don’t know. Why don’t you mind your own business! The point is that they let him go. They didn’t press the issue and Colonia Boys always pressed the issue.

So the CO boys never beat him up, but a few black kids tried to during his first few years in America. The first time Dad ever saw a black person it nearly ended in a fight. The kid was around his age and became upset over… something? Dad was terrified because he had no idea what he was saying because…he didn’t speak English! So what in the world was the kid so upset about? Like I said, mind your own business.

Another time a group of black kids tried to trap him in a public restroom. He thinks that they were trying to mug him, but, once again, English was still very confusing for him. For all he knows they were trying to get him to join their merry band of recorder players.

Somehow Dad managed to get by these guys and out of the bathroom (probably because he was too skinny to get a hold of). They almost caught up to him as he sprinted with all of his might back to his apartment, but somehow he made it and, of course, once you make it to your home you’re safe because that’s base and once you call base that means they can’t beat you up anymore. He didn’t quite escape unscathed, however, as he realized that he had dropped his crayons during the pursuit.

After laying low for a while, Dad finally came out only to see the apartment complex’s landlord, Geronimo (yes, that was his real name), looking down the street in the direction that the kids chasing him came from.

“Hey,” Geronimo said. “Were they chasing you?”

Dad nodded as he tried to see if they were hiding somewhere ready to pounce on him when he got far enough away from base. Apparently, these ruffians had taken their anger out on his crayons as he surveyed a quite colorful scene of their destruction along the sidewalk. O, the humanity!

“The next time they come after you just kick ’em in the chins,” Geronimo advised pointing to his own shin. “They all have weak chins so just kick ’em in the chins and they’ll leave you alone.”

Henry knew about America. He understood it. Toribio did not. Henry was a year older, taller, and more portly than Toribio. They met one day as Dad was playing in the alley behind his Colonia apartment. Henry jumped the fence from his house into the alley and made quite an impression on Toribio who fancied himself an expert climber. Dad couldn’t figure out how such a chubby kid could scale such heights. As he gawked, Henry approached him.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey! Como te llamas?”

“Toribio,” Dad replied.

“What?”

This was the typical response to his name which he was forced to repeat several times for Henry and many others in America. In fact, it was Henry who first called dubbed Dad, Toby, a name that he hated because it sounded extremely feminine to him. Dad is known as Toby to this day.

Henry was born in the United States, but his mother only spoke Spanish which was why he did. His family had always been devout Catholics, but they clung to their faith all the more after the untimely death of his father. As a single mother raising six children on her own, Henry’s mother was extremely appreciative of the financial help that the church gave her. Hence, Henry attended mass every evening and Toby decided to join him.

“Wait a minute?” Toby said to Henry in church one day. “I didn’t see you go to confession. Why are you taking communion?”

In Mexico, Toby wouldn’t think about receiving communion without first making his confession. It just wasn’t done.

“You don’t need to go every day,” Henry explained. “Just once a week.”

Henry was a wealth of useful information like this. This little slice of advice made church and God much more accessible to Toby. He loved the church and carried fond memories of it with him from Mexico, but now he didn’t have to kill himself by going through confession every single time he was going to receive communion.

Henry also taught Toby the strange games that Americans seemed to love like basketball and football. Toby didn’t know how to play these games at all and it showed.

“What I lacked in skill,” Dad told me. “I made up for with hustle.”

Henry and the others laughed uncontrollably as the little immigrant attempted to defend all five players of the opposing team at the same time.

“Don’t you know how to play basketball?” Henry and the others teased.

“No! I don’t!” Toby replied.

Henry didn’t just tease Toby for being a cheddar, however. He also taught him the game so that after awhile Toby didn’t look so awkward on the court. He was beginning to learn.

Dad had at least played baseball a few times in Mexico so when Henry suggested that they join a league he was a little more prepared. Unfortunately, they were put on separate teams. Dad and his team did surprisingly well. So well that they were scheduled to face Henry’s team for the championship. Once again, however, something happened that Toby didn’t understand culturally; his team’s two best pitchers were kicked off of his team by the league for being too old. Without their two aces, Henry’s team annihilated them.

“Hah! You guys only won all of those games by cheating!” Henry teased.

Toby was extremely confused by the whole situation. He knew that he hadn’t cheated so why were they being punished? I can only imagine how confusing all of these American rules were to someone who learned English by ordering cheeseburgers for his family.

Toby’s coach desperately kept trying different pitchers to stop the onslaught of the championship game, but to no avail. He even gave Dad a shot. Young Toby stepped-up on the mound and knew exactly what to do; throw strikes as hard as he could.

“Strike!” the umpire yelled. For some reason the catcher still approached Toby unhappily.

“You have to throw a lot harder,” the catcher said and then returned behind home-plate.

So Toby threw as hard as he could again.

“Strike!”

“Faster!”

Toby was so confused. He was throwing as hard as he could. He looked over at the catcher again and was even more perplexed because he had his mitt far below the strike zone.

“Is he signaling me to throw that low?” Toby wondered.

Wasn’t he supposed to throw strikes as hard as he could? Isn’t that how you got a batter out? Since Toby didn’t know what to do he decided to go with what was working. He wound up and let it fly again right down the pipe and watched the batter destroy it for a homerun. This was the beginning and end of Dad’s pitching career.

Dad did attempt to return the favor by sharing his extensive knowledge of bull-fighting with Henry. It didn’t end well. Apparently, at the end of a bull-fight, just before the matador kills the bull, he grabs a sword, places the tip of it against the fence and bends it.

“You see he does that, Henry,” Toby informed his friend, “so that there is a nice curve to the sword. That way when he sticks the sword in the top of the bull’s neck, the bend in sword makes it easier to hit the heart.”

“Why would a matador want a sword that bent?” Henry asked.

His theory was that the matador was testing the sword to make sure that it was sturdy and wouldn’t break during the kill thrust. Back and forth they argued until Dad finally had enough. Maybe he didn’t know about American sports, but he certainly about Mexican ones.

“What do you know?” Toby said. “I was born in Mexico. You were born here!”

They disagreed so fiercely that they both decided to become matadors. If only! They actually refused to speak to each other for a entire week which might as well be a decade to two best friends. Finally, after the longest seven days of their lives, they decided to go back to playing in the alleyways of Colonia and seeking God together at the evening masses.

In Magdalena, there were acres and acres of open land and horse-filled corrals right outside their front door. In America, they had two truck-trailers right outside their front door. In America everything seemed to be backwards; the water looked like milk because of chlorination and the milk looked like water because of the pasteurization. In Magdalena, Toribio and his brothers and sisters would fight over the milk, especially for the privilege of licking the cap where a sweet cream would form. Magdalena’s crystal clear water was so pure that it eventually immigrated also as Pepsi began bottling it and selling it as Natural Spring Water in America.

To Toribio, everything tasted better in Magdalena and by default, worse in America. Produce wasn’t even close in the States. Even the very walls around Toribio seemed to be made out of a strange, chalky cardboard. Their adobe house in Magdalena seemed much more solid as they were supported with huge beams of timber. The fact that he was sharing a room with his entire family didn’t increase his affections for America any either, but this was home now. No matter how much they missed Magdalena, they were living in America now so Toribio and his siblings decided to try and make the best of it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Toribio crawled underneath the flat-bed trailer that was permanently parked in his front yard to see if it was fit for a king. There were far too many spiders and way too much garbage to ever be considered worthy of housing royalty so he decided to clear it out. After much bravery and elbow grease, Toribio made the underside of the trailer spotless. Now it was time for the topside. Toribio found some rope and set up a pulley system to raise and lower the trailer as if it were a drawbridge. It still required quite a bit of imagination, but before long Preciado Castle became a favorite hang-out of Toribio’s siblings and cousins.

Toribio was still restless despite all of the work and playtime that he put into Preciado Castle. As nice as it was, King Toribio was still poor so he decided to go to the grocery store down the street to see if he could do something about that. He confidently walked into “La Esperanza” as the store was called, went straight up to the owner, and asked for a job. The owner was not in a rush to hire a nine year old boy so Toribio launched into an unrequested, undesired job interview.

“Look you need to re-stock these shelves so that your customers can see what they want right away,” Toribio said as the owner stood perplexed.

“You have to bring the milk to the front. I wouldn’t reach all the way back there for milk. I would just leave,” Toribio said, wondering how he could call such a watered-down liquid, milk. “And you can’t do all this because you have to work the register.”

The owner looked at his disorganized shelves and his barren looking refrigerators for what seemed like an eternity to Toribio.

“I’ll pay you three dollars a week…”

Despite this being a substantial amount of money for a 9-year-old immigrant, Toribio still decided to add another source of income to his revenue stream by collecting glass, liter, soda bottles that everyone seemed to be discarding all around his neighborhood. He took his scavenged items to his grocery store boss who would cash them out whenever Toribio felt like he had earned enough or when he wanted to purchase something from the store. With the money from these and other odd-jobs, Toribio was able to buy himself sodas, candy, and comic-books, but after awhile he decided to go after that elusive, remote-control, G.I. Joe tank; the one that was big enough for his brother, Little Nabor to ride.

“Hey, do you think I could buy that tank by giving you a little bit of money from time to time?” Toribio said to his boss who never got used to his audacity.

“I thought that I had invented something new,” present-day Dad told me as he remembered this prized toy of his youth. “I later learned that lay-away was nothing new.”

Audacity paid off in spades. That very Christmas, Toribio and Little Nabor were taking turns destroying their very expensive toy by riding it, crashing it, and shooting it’s giant rubber missiles with glee. The next thing he bought was a $40, talking, Suzie-Q doll for his little sister Eva. Dad remembered how much it cost because $40 was a ridiculous amount of money for anyone back then, let alone an immigrant who didn’t even know that he was poor until a servant of the Holy Roman Catholic Church told him. By then, however, Toribio was beginning to lose the thrill of working at La Esperanza.

]]>https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/08/28/la-esperanza/feed/0grocery storejosiahepreciadoWimpy Burgershttps://josiahpreciado.com/2015/08/14/wimpy-burgers/
https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/08/14/wimpy-burgers/#commentsFri, 14 Aug 2015 21:32:53 +0000http://josiahpreciado.com/?p=258]]>“Is that the only sweater that you have?” a Catholic missionary said to Toribio one day; it was beginning to get cold…well Southern California cold.

Toribio looked down at what he thought was a perfectly fine, hole-ridden, raggedy sweater.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Oh my God. You need clothes because you are poor!”

Now in America, the entire eight member family was living in a one bedroom apartment on Cooper Road in Colonia (Oxnard), California. One bedroom, a kitchen, an outhouse, and an enclosed, outdoor shower that they shared with the entire complex. Toribio knew that he couldn’t buy that new GI Joe tank that he saw the other day in the toy store, but he had no concept of what being poor meant. But now he was beginning to learn. Shocked, he decided to rush home to ask his mother if it was indeed true.

“Mom,” he said when he walked in to his crowded apartment. His brothers and sisters were beginning the nightly ritual of taking out their mattresses so that they could all sleep together in the living/bedroom. “Are we poor?”

“Yes,” Emilia said. “What did you think? That we’re rich?”

Besides being financially poor, Toribio and the family were also linguistically poor since they knew very few words in English. For some reason, it was decided that Toribio was the spokesman for the entire family. Probably because Toribio knew those two magic words that everyone learning a foreign tongue uses when they get in a bind.

“Slower, please…”

Whenever the phone would ring, everyone would scatter in terror because they knew that they would have to speak in English. So Emilia would yell for Toribio to answer it.

“Slower, please…” Toribio said after a flurry of English came over the receiver.

Whenever someone would knock on their door…

“Toribio!”

“I no understand,” Toribio would say to whoever was at the door rattling off English in a rapid-fire, sales pitch. “Slower, please…”

Some Sunday evenings, even though they were “poor”, Toribio’s family would go to Wimpy’s for the treat of some American cheeseburgers. When it came time to order in English, guess who was elected to do it?

Toribio confidently went up to the man that was working the register. The man looked like a human chimney as he constantly smoked while he was working.

“Six burgers, please,” were all of the words that Toribio knew at the time concerning Wimpy’s.

He learned a lot after that first trip. He learned that you need to ask for burgers with cheese in order to get cheese. It took him a few more months to learn that there was this whole other word “cheeseburger” in the English language. He learned that he and his family didn’t like the strange yellow sauce that they lathered onto the burgers. He went back to the Human Chimney to learn the proper way to order for next Sunday. Unfortunately, the only way he knew how to communicate his displeasure with the burgers was to take one with him, open it up, and say, “No.”

The Human Chimney somehow understood and was able to give Toribio an English lesson without removing the cigarette from his mouth the entire time.

“You don’t want mustard? Well you’ve got to speak up,” he said.

Toribio pointed again.

“No onions?” the Human Chimney eventually said.

“Si. No mustard. No onions,” Toribio said.

The next time that they went to Wimpy’s, Toribio repeated this over and over so that this time the burgers would be right.

“Six burgers with cheese. No onions. No mustard.”

He trotted back to the car with burgers in tow and was shocked when he and his family discovered burgers with cheese and nothing else on them; completely dry and tasteless. Back to the Human Chimney he went.

“No,” Toribio said holding the bare burger up.

“What?” the Human Chimney said as he tried to decipher what no meant this time. “You said no mustard. What do you want on it?”

“Something,” was all that Toribio could remember in English.

“You want mayonnaise instead?” the Human Chimney said pointing to that glorious, creamy condiment beloved by Toribio and the rest of his family.

The third trip to Wimpy’s was a blessing and a curse. He finally had the whole process down and the burgers were tasting good, but now his family was beginning to give him specific orders which required more English. No pickles for his little brother. No cheese for one of his sisters. No tomato, etc… And don’t get me started on how confusing soda orders for a family of eight was. But Toribio began to realize that he didn’t have to go back to the Human Chimney quite as much anymore. He also didn’t have to say “Slower, please…” quite as much on the phone or at his door. His English bank account was growing. Now all he needed was a job so that he could work on filling a real bank account with actual money to take care of the whole “poor” situation.

]]>https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/08/14/wimpy-burgers/feed/6wimpy_jean pierre gallot 69009josiahepreciadoThe First Time Dad Saw the Oceanhttps://josiahpreciado.com/2015/07/31/the-first-time-dad-saw-the-ocean/
https://josiahpreciado.com/2015/07/31/the-first-time-dad-saw-the-ocean/#respondSat, 01 Aug 2015 01:48:49 +0000http://josiahpreciado.com/?p=253]]> Where are they taking us? Ugh, this cab smells like a giant can of diesel. Disgusting. Why do I always get stuck on the door armrest? When I get bigger I’m always going to ride in the front seat and I’m gonna make Corney sit in the back. Why can’t they scoot over even a little bit? My sisters are so lame.

“Dad’s waiting for us in Nogales…”

I suppose he can kill me in Nogales just as easily as he could kill me at home.

You see, Dad, I thought there was this frogman and this pool…No, that won’t work.

It’s not like I’m learning anything new at school anyways…Yeah, he’s not gonna fall for that either. I am so dead.

Vaccinations were one of the many hoops the family had to jump through.

America? What kind of place requires an ugly nurse to stick me with her poisonous needle. Ughh! God, it itches! Now this thing is starting to get a bunch of weird bumps all around it. Am I dying? No. Nurse Fea said that this would happen. I hope she was telling the truth. Why do we have to go to this stupid America anyways?

The sooner I get back to my pigeons the better. We should have enough feed for a couple of months and we’ll probably be back by then or sooner. Abuelo will have to spend a few more pesos on feed without me fighting for the best prices…

Their bus arrives to take them to Tecate and then the border.

That rickety old thing isn’t going to make it two miles before it blows up. Why, can’t we just stay here where we can walk to everything or take the horse? Ugh! How long does it take to get to America anyways?

Whoa! It’s going to take a lot longer with those in the way. Rumarosa? I hope we don’t go that high up. Dios mio! There’s almost no room between us and the cliff. What the…?Look at all of those car wrecks down there!

“Dad,” one of the siblings said. “Are there any bodies in those cars down there still?”

“Oh, yeah!” Nabor said. “A lot of people died right here…”

Why are my parents doing this!

Argh! These weird blisters are getting roasted! Thanks, Nurse Fea. Why can’t I just stay home with Abuelo? I can take care of myself, the house, and learn English right here! And we can go to church together. The choir is probably practicing without me right now. I bet none of the gringo altar boys ever started a choir. There’s probably no church in America at all. Yeah, right. The church is everywhere. I want to go home.

Across the border it was back to a yellow cab for the eight of them and their two suitcases.

I swear my nalgas are going to fall off before we get to…wherever we are going now that we are here. Ox-something? Who cares? It’s not like I need to learn the names of any of these places. Look at all of this ugly cement! Mom and Dad will probably realize what a mistake this is right now. I will gladly lose both of my butt checks if it means getting back to my friends, my abuelo, my chickens, my pigs, my pigeons…

Is that huge chunk of cement over the road? What is that? A bridge or something? Why would they build a bridge over a road? Oh, there are cars on it too. They build roads on top of other roads here. Why are my parents bringing us here?

In Santa Monica on Highway 1 just past Lincoln Boulevard, there is a short tunnel which leads to the coast…

Is that water? Look at all that blue. What do the gringos do with it all? It never ends. Just more and more water forever with no end in sight surrounding this entire America, ready to swallow it up at any moment.

That lady’s hair looks weird. It’s as bright as a lemon. Is she walking around in her underwear? Wait a minute. What’s that box she just stepped into? Is that a phone she’s holding? She’s probably calling for help with all of this water that’s about to drown all of us. Sorry lemon chica…nothing can save us from all of that water. Nothing.